[PHOTO] Towards the Earlscourt war memorial, Prospect Cemetery

[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links

• John Lorinc at Spacing considers the complication idea of a city charter for Toronto. Is it worth it? Does it ignore other governance issues?
• Tourism is booming in Toronto, transforming the economy of the metropolis. The Toronto Star reports.
• NOW Toronto notes how the Toronto District School Board is introducing educational courses intended to prepare students for careers in hospitality.
• Legal controversy surrounding the governance of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and other like cemeteries in Toronto, is ongoing. The Toronto Star reports.
• In Milton, the owner of an illegal rooming house where one tenant died has been found financially liable. CBC reports.
• The Toronto Star tells the story of soldiers returning from the First World War who attacked Chinatown and its inhabitants, here.
• NOW Toronto points to an exhibition of photos created in solidarity with Hong Kong journalists.

[URBAN NOTE] Fifteen urban links

• It has been forty years since a train derailment that threatened to unleash toxic chemicals on Mississauga resulted in a remarkably successful mass evacuation. CBC reports.
• There is a Vimy display in Kingston’s Communications and Electronics Museum. Global News reports.
• It is unsettling that the Ontario city of Hamilton reports such a high levels of hate crimes. CBC reports.
• Le Devoir shares a warning that inattention to language means that Longueuil could end up becoming as English/French bilingual as the West Island.
• VICE reports on how the dying desert town of California City is hoping for a revival based on cannabis, here</u.
• MacLean’s tells the story about how an encounter of koi with local otters in Vancouver reflects a human culture clash, too.
• SCMP looks at how planners want to use big data to make Shenzhen a “smart socialist” city, here.
• CityLab hosts an article by Andrew Kenney looking at the importance of an old map of Denver for he, a newcomer to the city.
• These photos of the recent acqua alta in Venice are heartbreaking. CityLab has them.
• JSTOR Daily tells the story of an ill-timed parade in 1918 Philadelphia that helped the Spanish flu spread throughout the city.
• The LRB Blog looks at a corner of Berlin marked by the history of German Southwest Africa.
• Guardian Cities shares a remarkable ambitious plan to remake Addis Ababa into a global city.
• Durban, in South Africa, may offer lessons for other southern African metropolises. Guardian Cities reports.
• The NYR Daily recently took a look at what happened to so completely gentrify the West Village of New York City.
• Feargus O’Sullivan at CityLab takes a look at a new documentary, If New York Was Called Angouleme. What if the site of New York City was colonized by the French in the early 16th century?

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the newly-named Neptune moon of Hippocamp, and how it came about as product of a massive collision with the larger moon of Proteus.
• Centauri Dreams also reports on the discovery of the Neptune moon of Hippocamp.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes how the attempt to revoke the citizenship of Shamima Begum sets a terribly dangerous precedent for the United Kingdom.
• D-Brief notes new evidence suggesting the role of the Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions in triggering the Cretaceous extinction event, alongside the Chixculub asteroid impact.
• Far Outliers notes the problems of Lawrence of Arabia with Indian soldiers and with Turks.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing takes issue with the state of philosophical contemplation about technology, at least in part a structural consequence of society.
• Hornet Stories shares this feature examining the future of gay porn, in an environment where amateur porn undermines the existing studios.
• JSTOR Daily considers the spotty history of casting African-American dancers in ballet.
• Language Hat suggests that the Académie française will soon accept for French feminized nouns of nouns links to professionals (“écrivaine” for a female writer, for instance).
• The LRB Blog considers the implications of the stripping of citizenship from Shamima Begum. Who is next? How badly is citizenship weakened in the United Kingdom?
• Marginal Revolution notes the upset of Haiti over its banning by Expedia.
• The NYR Daily notes the tension in Turkey between the country’s liberal laws on divorce and marriage and rising Islamization.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the moment, in the history of the universe, when dark energy became the dominant factors in the universe’s evolution.
• Towleroad remembers Roy Cohn, the lawyer who was the collaborator of Trump up to the moment of Cohn’s death from AIDS.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little takes a look at Marx’s theories of how governments worked.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the existential pressures facing many minority languages in Russia.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait considers the possibility that the remarkably low-density ‘Oumuamua might be a cosmic snowflake.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about the challenges of free-lance writing, including clients who disappear before they pay their writers for their work.
• Centauri Dreams notes that observations of cosmic collisions by gravitational wave astronomy are becoming numerous enough to determine basic features of the universe like Hubble’s constant.
• D-Brief notes that the Hayabusa2 probe is set to start mining samples from asteroid Ryugu.
• Dangerous Minds remembers radical priest and protester Philip Berrigan.
• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Irina Seceleanu explains why state defunding of public education in the United States is making things worse for students.
• Far Outliers notes how many of the communities in South Asia that saw soldiers go off to fight for the British Empire opposed this imperial war.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the decidedly NSFW love letters of James Joyce to Nora Barnacle. Wasn’t Kate Bush inspired by them?
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how the failure of the California high-speed rail route reveals many underlying problems with funding for infrastructure programs in the United States.
• Marginal Revolution notes the creepy intrusiveness of a new app in China encouraging people to study up on Xi Jinping thought.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at what is to be expected come the launch of the Beresheet Moon lander by Israeli group SpaceIL.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society considers the philosophical nature of the Xerox Corporation.
• Window on Eurasia notes that the Russian Orthodox Church seems not to be allowing the mass return of its priests who lost congregations to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to Russia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell considers the astute ways in which El Chapo is shown to have run his business networks.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at two recent British films centering on displays of same-sex male attraction, The Pass and God’s Own Country.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Colby King writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about furnace, kiln, and oven operators as recorded in the American Community Survey. What experiences do they have in common, and which separate them?
• Far Outliers reports on the work of the Indian Labourer Corps on the Western Front, collecting and recycling raw materials from the front.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing makes the case that the seeming neutrality of modern digital technologies are dissolving the established political order.
• Joe. My. God. notes a report from Andrew McCabe suggesting that Trump did not believe his own intelligence services’ reports about the range of North Korean missiles, instead believing Putin.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the interracial marriages of serving members of the US military led to the liberalization of immigration law in the United States in the 1960s.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the connections of the police in Portland, Oregon, to the alt-right.
• Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution shares a report of the discovery of English-speaking unicorns in South America that actually reveals the remarkable language skills of a new AI. Fake news, indeed.
• The NYR Daily shares a short story by Panashe Chigumadzi, “You Can’t Eat Beauty”.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw welcomes a new fluidity in Australian politics that makes the elections debatable.
• Drew Rowsome looks at the horror fiction of Justin Cronin.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel shares some of the key historical images of Pluto, from its discovery to the present.
• Window on Eurasia takes a look at the only church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church operating in Russia, in the Moscow area city of Noginsk.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell makes the point that counting on opinion pieces in journalism as a source of unbiased information is a categorical mistake.
• Arnold Zwicky looks back, on President’s Day at Berkeley, at his experiences and those of others around him at that university and in its community.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the evidence for the massive collision that left exoplanet Kepler 107c an astoundingly dense body.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly tells her readers the secrets of the success of her relationship with her husband, Jose.
• Centauri Dreams notes what the New Horizons probe has found out, of Ultima Thule and of Pluto, by looking back.
• The Crux shares the obituaries of scientists from NASA for the Opportunity rover.
• D-Brief reports that NASA has declared the Opportunity rover’s mission officially complete.
• Dead Things introduces its readers to Mnyamawamtuka, a titanosaur from Tanzania a hundred million years ago.
• Drew Ex Machina shares a stunning photo of Tropical Cyclone Gita, taken from the ISS in 2018.
• Far Outliers notes how the Indian Army helped save the British army’s positions from collapse in the fall of 1914.
• Joe. My. God. notes a Christian group in the United States trying to encourage a boycott of supposedly leftist candy manufacturers like Hershey’s.
• JSTOR Daily looks at why covenant marriage failed to become popular.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money explains the hatred for new Congressperson Ilham Omar.
• The Planetary Society Blog links to ten interesting podcasts relating to exploration, of Earth and of space.
• Drew Rowsome interviews Tobias Herzberg about Feygele, his show in the Rhubarb festival at Buddies in Bad Times.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps looks at the evidence, presented by (among others) Geneviève von Petzinger, suggesting that forty thousand years ago cave artists around the world may have shared a common language of symbols.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that the policies of Putin are contributing to a growing sense of nationalism in Belarus.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• The Crux notes the discovery of a second impact crater in Greenland, hidden under the ice.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that ancient Celts did, in fact, decapitate their enemies and preserve their heads.
• Far Outliers notes how Pakhtun soldier Ayub Khan, in 1914-1915, engaged in some cunning espionage for the British Empire on the Western Front.
• Kashmir Hill at Gizmodo notes how cutting out the big five tech giants for one week–Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft–made it almost impossible for her to carry on her life.
• Hornet Stories notes that, unsurprisingly, LGBTQ couples are much more likely to have met online that their heterosexual counterparts.
• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox imagines Elizabeth Warren giving a speech that touches sensitively and intelligently on her former beliefs in her Cherokee ancestry.
• Mónica Belevan at the Island Review writes, directly and allegorically, about the Galapagos Islands and her family and Darwin.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the economics of the romance novel.
• Language Hat notes the Mandombe script creating by the Kimbanguist movement in Congo.
• Harry Stopes at the LRB Blog notes the problem with Greater Manchester Police making homeless people a subject of concern.
• Ferguson activists, the NYR Daily notes, are being worn down by their protests.
• Roads and Kingdoms lists some things visitors to the Uzbekistan capital of Tashkent should keep in mind.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel makes a case for supersymmetry being a failed prediction.
• Towleroad notes the near-complete exclusion of LGBTQ subjects and themes from schools ordered by Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro.
• Window on Eurasia notes a somewhat alarmist take on Central Asian immigrant neighbourhoods in Moscow.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the Kurds, their history, and his complicated sympathy for their concerns.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Charlie Stross at Antipope notes</u. the many problems appearing already with 2019, starting with Brexit.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait examines the mysterious AT2018cow event. What was it?
• blogTO notes that the Ontario government seems to be preparing for a new round of amalgamation, this time involving Toronto neighbours.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about her strategies for minimizing her personal waste, including buying expensive durables.
• D-Brief shares Chang’e-4 photos taken on the far side of the Moon.
• Bruce Dorminey notes an innovative design for a steam-powered asteroid hopper.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about verstehen, the process of coming to an understanding of a subject, as demonstrated in the Arlene Stein study Unbound about trans men.
• Gizmodo looks at the remarkably complex nascent planetary system of the quarternary star system HD 98800.
• Imageo shares a visualization of the terrifyingly rapid spread of the Camp Fire.
• JSTOR Daily debunks the myth of Wilson’s unconditional support for the Fourteen Points.
• Language Hat notes a new study that claims to provide solid grounds for distinguishing dialects from languages.
• Language Log looks at what David Bowie had to say about the Internet in 1999, and how he said it.
• Christine Gordon Manley writes about her identity as a Newfoundlander.
• Marginal Revolution notes the very variable definitions of urbanization in different states of India as well as nationally.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog shares a few more images of Ultima Thule.
• Drew Rowsome reviews a new Toronto production of Iphegenia and the Furies.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how a fifth dimension might make the instantaneous spore drive of Discovery possible.
• Window on Eurasia links to an article examining eight misconceptions of Russians about Belarus.

[ISL] Five #islands links: Nantucket, Newfoundland, Scotland, South Goulburn, Toronto Islands

• JSTOR Daily notes</u. the unorthodox and generally unacknowledged truce struck between Nantucket Island and the British Empire in 1814, during the War of 1812.
• A visit by Anthony Bourdain had lasting effects on the culinary scene on Newfoundland. Global News reports.
• The Island Review reports on the different plans of the different islands of Scotland to commemorate the end of the First World War.
• Michael Erard at The Atlantic writes about the remarkable South Goulburn Island, an island off the coast of Australia where speakers of nine different languages co-exist in a shared passive multilingualism.
• Richard Longley wrote at NOW Toronto about the challenges faced by the Toronto Islands in the era of climate change and instability.